Welcome to Issue 32 of the Secondary Magazine. As the summer term starts and the exam season rapidly approaches, now is the time to plan what you will do with some of that time gained when Year 11 have departed. In the meantime, there is a lot of revision to do! Contents From the editor – Gauss I can remember my primary school teacher teaching me a ‘trick’ to quickly add up a set of consecutive numbers to ‘amaze my friends’. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that this ‘trick’ had been used by Gauss whilst a schoolboy. Perhaps your pupils would like to perform this ‘trick’ to honour Gauss’ birthday? Up2d8 Maths The fortnightly Up2d8 maths resources explore a range of mathematical themes in a topical context. What makes a rollercoaster scary? SAW - The Ride carried its first passengers earlier this year and has claimed to be the scariest roller coaster in the world. In this resource, students use this claim as the basis for a statistical investigation into what makes a roller coaster scary. The Interview – Peter Ashwin Peter is a professor of mathematics at the University of Exeter. Here he shares a snapshot of his work and an insight into his personality. Focus on…10 Is it true that some numbers have greater prominence than others? As the basis for the metric system, 10 is certainly an important number. Here are some facts to help you form an opinion. An idea for the classroom – 3D co-ordinates A colleague recently went for an interview and was asked to teach a lesson on 3D co-ordinates. He devised an activity which is shared with you here. 5 things to do Following the Easter break, there are some mathematical and general ideas to stay on top of things at this busy time of year. Diary of a subject leader – Real issues in the life of a fictional Subject Leader Literacy and numeracy are key basic skills that equip pupils for life. We certainly play our part in developing numeracy skills, but what about literacy skills? Our subject leader considers his role in focussing on literacy in mathematics. .www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching Gauss Carl Friedrich Gauss did not come from an academic family – he was born on 30 April, 1777, and his father was a mason in Braunschweig, Germany. His father wanted Carl Friedrich to follow his profession: it was his mother who supported his education. There is a story that when Gauss was about 10, his teacher set the class a problem: Whilst most of the class started to add up 1 + 2 = 3 3+3 = 6 6 + 4 = 10 etc, Gauss finished quickly because he had seen a short cut: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … + 48 + 49 + 50 100 + 99 + 98 + 97 + … + 53 + 52 + 51 101 + 101 + 101 + 101 + … + 101 + 101 + 101 50 x 101 = 5050 At the age of 17, Gauss proved that a regular 17-sided polygon could be constructed using just a compass and straight edge (in fact, he proved that any regular polygon with a number of sides which is a Fermat prime could be so constructed). His relatives later requested that this shape should be engraved on his tombstone, but the mason thought this would look too much like a circle so he replaced it with a 17-pointed star. Gauss is well known for his work on number theory; shortly after his work with the heptadecagon, he invented modular arithmetic and published a book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae to present some of his work. Gauss accepted a position as professor of Astronomy in Göttingen and predicted the position and timing of the next appearance of the dwarf planet, Ceres. When Gauss died, his brain was preserved: it weighed 1 492 grams, and the cerebral area was equal to 219 588 square millimetres. Perhaps there is a connection between brain mass and intelligence?! .www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching Up2d8 Maths The fortnightly Up2d8 maths resources explore a range of mathematical themes in a topical context. The resource is not intended to be a set of instructions but rather a framework which you can personalise to fit your classroom and your learners. What makes a roller coaster scary? SAW - The Ride carried its first passengers earlier this year and has claimed to be the scariest roller coaster in the world. In this resource students use this claim as the basis for a statistical investigation into what makes a roller coaster scary, and are encouraged to use the results of their investigation to rate how scary different roller coasters are (did you know that there's a roller coaster in New Jersey with a 418ft drop? Terrifying!). There's also the possibility of working on some proportional reasoning by comparing the relative heights and speeds of some world record-breaking roller coasters. This resource is not year group specific and so will need to be read through and possibly adapted before use. The way in which you choose to use the resource will enable your learners to access some of the Key Processes from the Key Stage 3 Programme of Study. Click here to download the Up2d8 maths resource - in PowerPoint format. .www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching The Interview Name: Peter Ashwin About you: I’m a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Exeter. I teach a variety of levels; my research area is dynamical systems and applications. I help out on the board of the Devon Further Mathematics Centre. The most recent use of mathematics in your job was... well, in my job I find it hard to name a day when mathematics is not central to many things I am doing. At the moment, I’m working with a colleague in cell biology doing some mathematical modelling of transport on the cytoskeleton of cells, the internal scaffolding that gives cells structure. It has involved me learning a bit of biology, which I found very exciting. It has also showed me that mathematics developed for modelling motorway traffic and call centre queuing is relevant to what is going on inside every living cell. Some mathematics that amazed you is... the dynamics of piecewise isometries have fascinated me for several years now. These are objects somewhat like jigsaw puzzles made from exchanging very simple convex polygons. Their dynamics gives rise to fascinating and beautiful patterns on the plane. They look like they should be easy to understand, but there remain a large number of very basic open problems in this area with a number of researchers dedicated to looking at them. Why mathematics? I have found mathematics fascinating as a career because it can be so varied. In terms of applications, I have had the fortune to be exposed to a wide range of sciences and engineering, simply because mathematics gives so many tools that can help. Your favourite/most significant mathematics-related anecdote is… it’s a serious point, but I have been recently reading a wonderfully clear book (available online here) by David MacKay called Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. He suggests that as a society, and especially in relation to energy, we need to stop talking in adjectives and start using numbers. A mathematics joke that makes you laugh is… a colleague of mine has a jumper with the motto, “Mathematicians are the number -eiπ” Your favourite television programme is… I’m not a big TV fan, but I do enjoy a quiet night in with a DVD; a feature film or murder mystery. Something else that makes you laugh is… I’m an avid reader of Private Eye; it manages to be as up to date as many of the newspapers while being hilarious. For example, I love their Scenes you seldom see cartoon series. Your favourite ice-cream flavour is… well, maybe not my favourite, but certainly the most unusual I ever had is mushroom and 7-up flavour. I only found it once; I wonder why that was! Who inspired you? Many people along the way from school teachers to colleagues, and indeed some of my students continue to inspire me! My PhD supervisor, Ian Stewart, at Warwick, was a stimulating person to work with. He opened my eyes to the many possible uses of mathematics. .www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching If you weren’t doing this job you would… probably find another way to do mathematics. .www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching Focus on...10 10! = 6!7! This is the only known solution to n! = a!b! (except for the general pattern (n!)! = n!(n-1)! The base 10 number system was considered to be so simple that Pierre Simon de Laplace commented that this simplicity ‘is the very reason for our not being sufficiently aware how much admiration it deserves’. The metric system was first recommended in 1791 by the Paris Academy of Sciences. One metre was defined to be 1/40 000 000 part of a circumference of the earth through the poles and the ratios between units was always to be powers of 10. Greek and Latin prefixes are used for larger and smaller units, respectively. Ten is the smallest noncototient, a number that cannot be expressed as the difference between any integer and the total number of coprimes below it.